Article spinning academic survey - request for data

The Penguin update has nothing to do with the detecting of duplicated content. It's all about the "unnatural" links.

Yes, it's the ideal case when the content is initially written in spin-ready format (e.g. using Spintax).

On the other hand, it is still possible to synonymize the static content and get a very quality result which can't be recognized as a spun one (well-made 4-word niche dictionary is the key). Take a look at this video:

This.

But, unfortunately, in "spinning discussions" which survive for long enough without the threads being closed by a moderator, members openly advertising spinning-based software and/or services in their signature files will eventually join in. (I never quite know whether it's good or bad that they don't conceal their sig-files in such threads: it's good because at least their possible motivation/incentivization is apparent, perhaps, but then arguably it's also bad because they're supposed to, really?).

If "further reading" helps/interests anyone, this post, the first half (or so) of this thread, and most of this thread have collectively been really helpful to many people here.

I remain convinced that most people who "use spinning" are doing so through a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of "duplicate content". Personally, I like to recommend to them this little article from expert article marketer Anne Pottinger, which I think even includes some direct quotations from Google's WebMaster Central Blog.

There are also quite a lot of people who imagine that a backlink in Google's supplemental index is somehow "worth less" than one in the main index (honestly - I know it's nonsensical but some people really do believe this, because the realities of explanations and posts like this one have apparently entirely escaped them.)

This little article is my last offer: it's a very useful and accurate explanation of the subject.

@multiplecloud - I already some a few instances of URLs with "spun" content (obviously spun) that rank higher than URLs with content that appears original. For example, doing a search for "Best 3 spyware removal tools" on google produces a URL ranking which, in the middle of page 1, has a link to a page with content that is obviously spun (I know this because I have found spun versions of the same content).

Right now, I'm investigating how to characterise "spun" content - how best to describe its relationship to the original content, e.g, pronoun order (which pronouns are used and in what order) - so that effective detection methods can be devised, as well as trying to find out how widespread the practice is. I think I also ought to devise some kind of categorization of different sorts of article spinning - the practice of news sites reporting the content of company press releases, for example, is a kind of article spinning.

Hi Nicola, I'm not in the office today but will be in tomorrow around 12pm GMT+1. I can reply to uni email (I have remote access) today if that helps.

thanks Nicola - and thanks for the chat yesterday! very helpful!